Is Watching Atlasians Debate the Specifics of the Federal Financial Bailouts...

[politicaltipster]

Actually, I disagree with the idea that people shouldn't criticise Paulson or Benanke.

Although I strongly agreed with Petraeus on Iraq, I think the Bush administration were wrong to leave the selling of the plan to an unelected official. If Bush had gone out to the country and pushed the surge, instead of hiding behind Petraeus's coat tails, then his popularity wouldn't have been so low and there would have been more support behind it. Fortunately, Lieberman and McCain essentially did Bush's job for him while MoveOn made the huge blunder of personally attacking Petraeus. However, it could have very easily have gone the other way.

Also, Bush's decision to convene the Iraq Study Group in 2006, which implied that he had no plan of his own, made him look weak. Indeed, I believe that the ISG (and the rumours that they were going to recommend a withdrawal) gave a green light to AQ and made things much worse.

Similarly, although there is a coherant (though incorrect) a case to be made for a bailout  I think it is undemocratic to try to stifle debate. The US taxpayer (and maybe other taxpayers as well if this plan is aped by other countries) is going to have to foot the bill - so the taxpayer has the right to scrutinise the deal. I'm not American but wasn't one of the founding principles of the US 'no taxation without representation'?

Personally, I think this is unecessary. Sure, the stock market did badly but even by Friday morning it had barely entered bear market territory (as defined by -25% ytd). If Wall Street could survive a 1987 style crash then it can survive this crisis. Sure things would have been unpleasent for Wall Street, but as one of my colleagues put it on TV (in a slightly different context) bailing out the banks is like "like taking a drunk to the liquor store".